Featured Domains

Scenes from a domain name auction in China

These are some of the Chinese domain name investors buying your domains.

The domain name market in China is hot and is driving major price appreciation, especially in short domain names.

What’s the Chinese domain name community like? A lot like that in other parts of the world. It has its own “big personalities” and players. It also has its own gatherings and domain name auctions.

Last month, 域名圈 organized a live domain name auction in Beijing that attracted 200-300 people. 域名圈 loosely translates to Domain Name Circle or Domainer’s Circle. (域名 is domain name and 圈 is circle or ring.) The group is led by 王培陛 (WANG Peibi).

Chinese domain name investor 邓玉生 （DENG Yusing） chronicled the event, and you can see results and pictures here and here.

The top sale from the event, as reported by 邓玉生, was 32.cn for 1,470,000 CNY ($237,000 USD).

(A NamePros post about the event apparently erroneously includes some domain names that weren’t offered at the auction, including 9.top, 0317.top and 52.com. 52.com has been reported to have sold for seven figures prior to this auction, but the domain name hasn’t been transferred yet.)

Photos from the auction look a lot like that of a live domain name auction in the United States, even down to the attractive models hired to liven up the show. Sponsors included Verisign, CNNIC and the .Top registry.

Many thanks to Simon Cousins and his team of China experts at Allegravita for helping me translate and understand this auction. Allegravita has helped a number of top level domain name companies target the Chinese market.

Comments

It is interesting to see Chinese participating in a domain auction. I’m not surprised they are spending that much on domain names, after all, the country is the second biggest economy in the world and is looking forward to displace US.

With the limited supply of NN.com, NNN.com and NNNN.com domain names, the price has reached seven figures. I have noticed that for the past 6 months that Chinese are buying 3-character domain names and they are able to snap them between 1k and 3k per domain name, and resell them for over 10k. It seems to me that the 3-character domains will be the next category to reach a high resale value within the next couple of years. I have sold S36.com months ago to Chinese for $7,800. Now I am asking $10,000 for a 3-character domain regardless of the combination.

I was offered into the low 30k dollars for an LLL this may, but the chinese stock market has imploded. Still, names are still selling for high prices. Honestly, I think all LLLs should cost 100k, but I have a bias :). Still, when you think that once you own a domain name, you NEVER have to let it go, it remains central to the marketing of a website forever, and the Chinese take the long view.

Nice post Andrew. My colleagues and I at TLD Registry know just about every person that attended that auction. There are plenty of motivated buyers in China and other auctions to attend. You will see more news out of China this year.